Protesters take Democrats to task

April 20, 2011 — At a time when many high-profile liberals are breathing a sigh of relief after President Obama seemed to give a nod to his base in his budget address last week, another constituency is vocally arguing that progressives should abandon the Democrats altogether.

On Friday Apr. 15, hundreds of people gathered at a rally in New York City’s Union Square. While the demonstration was purposefully staged on Tax Day to draw attention to the fact that many large corporations will not pay taxes this year, the underlying message was that Democratic voters have been abandoned by the Democratic party and that progressives need to organize around what protesters describe as “key liberal values” — values they say have been forgotten by most Democratic officeholders. The cause of this disconnect, many demonstrators argued, can be traced back to the increasing influence of corporate interests in Washington.